Tanzania expansion: founding donation received

Hand in Hand is on track to create 200,000 sustainable jobs in Tanzania over the next five years, thanks to a founding donation of approximately US $1.5 million.

Received this month, the funds will support in full the first phase of Hand in Hand Eastern Africa’s expansion into the country. That phase, expected to last a year, will see:

Our job creation model adapted for the Tanzanian context;

Offices established in Arusha and Moshi;

Staff hired;

Contracts signed with partner organisations to help scale up the programme.

By the numbers

The donation will also help kick off our Tanzanian operation’s second phase, unfolding between 2017 and 2021. By the time Phase Two is done, we’ll have created:

150,000 sustainable businesses

200,000 jobs

30% average increase in household income

750,000 transformed lives

Why Tanzania

Two-thirds of Tanzanians live in poverty, according to the United Nations Development Programme. Almost half, 44 percent, live on less than US $1.25 a day. Promisingly, annual GDP growth hovers at close to 7 percent. It’s a welcome trend, if one that belies reality for the country’s mostly rural population: the poorest 20 percent of Tanzanians own less than a tenth of the country’s wealth.

Starting a formal business in Tanzania is difficult and getting harder all the time. The country dropped seven places to 129th overall in the World Bank’s 2016 Doing Business report, which measures business regulation in 189 countries. Now more than ever, family entrepreneurs in the informal economy must pick up the slack.

For more information about Hand in Hand’s expansion into Tanzania, please contact Dorothea Arndt.